I acknowledge that no individual American is responsible for any of this, and many are opposed to the Trump administration. However, I’m still angry and frustrated at America generally and it’s very difficult to separate that from my feelings toward an anonymous American I interact with in the fediverse.

You’re doing critical self-examination unlike what some “America bad = all individual Americans bad” emotional onanists here do, and I appreciate that.

But further, there is no true moral defense for collective punishment, and all of that philosophical foundation applies to collective blame. For example, collective punishment violates both the Hague international legal principles and the Geneva Convention. It is contrary to Kantian ethics (and if you’re using utilitarianism to justify depriving people of individual moral agency, then we have nothing to discuss). There is plenty more food for thought here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment .

Blame people who support and act in support of Trump. But don’t blame people who oppose Trump and act in opposition to Trump. It’s pretty easy to understand, morally-sound logic.

I get that. I live as an immigrant American in the UK, and it’s very frustrating sometimes. I more get along with the people who hate America, but I’m used to seeing the light in their eyes die when they hear my accent the first time. I don’t wash my hands of anything America has done, but I’ve done everything I practically can. I still vote, I stay informed, and I am depriving the regime of my taxable income.

I watch with great satisfaction when a leftist sets a cop car on fire, but I have a family to think about. I can’t be doing those kinds of heroics, and the temptation to throw down was too great when I was living stateside. I have pacifist beliefs and ideals, but not pacifist emotions. I probably never will. Growing up has been a slow motion destruction of everything I was raised to think I was part of. I was raised in cosmopolitanism and intellectualism, only to learn that my country had abandoned those ideals decades before my birth (if they were ever sincerely held at all).

I do understand hating Americans, I’m the conflicted vampire-hunting daywalker of hating Americans. But even I try not to judge people purely by their governments, that would just be stupid. Imagine hating North Koreans or Russians, it’s obviously wrong. What are they supposed to do, overthrow their governments? Their governments that are orders of magnitude weaker than the US government? See?

Ah yes, laughing at the lower class dying will surely teach the billionaires and millionaires a valuable lesson.

You do realize that’s what you’re doing, right? Laughing at the poor dying, the same thing that the polluting billionaires and millionaires in the US are doing?

Let me really spell it out for you: the polluters of the US (and world) are not the ones without A/C, and they’re not the ones that will suffer from lack of food due to drought. No, they will just come to your country once they’ve extracted the resources in the US, and laugh at you dying. Just like they’re doing to the lower class in the US.

Some of them have already moved. Hope you’re ready, and not just laughing at people dying.

Alright, enjoy spiking that football. You were born someplace that doesn’t need to stop existing, happy for you and your lack of empathy.